trap, sundry gratuities.... I doubt if the total will come
very much under fifty pounds. And I seem to have lost a hat somewhere."

Billy regarded his toes and cleared his throat.

"Depending as I do on a widowed mother in Brixton for all the
expenditure that isn't covered by my pot-hunting--"

"Of course," said Benham, "it wasn't a fair sample afternoon."

"Still--"

"There's footer," said Benham, "we might both play footer."

"Or boxing."

"And, anyhow, you must come with me when I drive again. I'm going to
start a trotter."

"If I miss another drive may I be--lost for ever," said Billy, with the
utmost sincerity. "Never more will I get down, Benham, wherever you may
take me. Short of muffing my fellowship I'm with you always.... Will it
be an American trotter?"

"It will be the rawest, gauntest, ungainliest brute that ever scared the
motor-bicycles on the Northampton Road. It will have the legs and stride
of an ostrich. It will throw its feet out like dealing cards. It will
lift its head and look the sun in the eye like a vulture. It will have
teeth like the English spinster in a French comic paper.... And we will
fly...."

"I shall enjoy it very much," said Prothero in a small voice after an
interval for reflection. "I wonder where we shall fly. It will do us
both a lot of good. And I shall insure my life for a small amount in
my mother's interest.... Benham, I think I will, after all, take a
whiskey.... Life is short...."

He did so and Benham strolled to the window and stood looking out upon
the great court.

"We might do something this afternoon," said Benham.

"Splendid idea," reflected Billy over his whiskey. "Living hard and
thinking hard. A sort of Intelligentsia that is BLOODED.... I shall, of
course, come as far as I can with you."

13

In one of the bureau drawers that White in this capacity of literary
executor was examining, there were two documents that carried back
right to these early days. They were both products of this long wide
undergraduate argumentation that had played so large a part in the
making of Benham. One recorded the phase of maximum opposition, and one
was the outcome of the concluding approach of the antagonists. They were
debating club essays. One had been read to a club in Pembroke, a club
called the ENQUIRERS, of which White also had been a member, and as he
turned it over he found the circumstances of its reading coming back to
his memory. He had been pre